Making of Making app

If you make a product it’s important to keep costs down so that you can be competitive, but more and more in this modern, over-stretched and under-resourced world, it’s equally important that you choose sustainable materials to use in the manufacturing process. Thanks to the The Sustainable Apparel Coalition, a group of over 80 leading apparel and footwear brands, retailers, suppliers, nonprofits, and NGOs , you can check how your materials stack up with the The Materials Sustainability List, which uncatalogues around 75,000 items found in Nike’s vast materials library and gives them each a score based on their environmental impact and long-term sustainability. It was a huge job that took the team six years to complete, and you can see that from the level of detail included in the index. As well as being a great source of information for apparel manufacturers this database puts the power of knowledge in the hands of the designers, who can plan their garments from the hems up to be fully sustainable as well as beautiful. To make life even easier (and more accessible) Nike have recently packaged this data up into an iPhone app called Making of Making.

For more news, reviews and useful tips

About the author

Kate Russell is a technology reporter, speaker and author. She appears weekly on the Webscape segment of the BBC technology show Click, and is a regular expert at various other TV and radio stations. Kate's first book, ‘Working the Cloud’, is the ultimate collection of online tips, tricks and resources for small businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs. Her first novel, ‘Elite: Mostly Harmless’, is a sci-fi story based on a remake of the computer game Elite Dangerous.